Johnny Appleseed - in Modern Culture

In Modern Culture

Johnny Appleseed is remembered in American popular culture by his traveling song or Swedenborgian hymn ("The Lord is good to me..."), which is today sung before meals in some American households.

Many books and films have been based on the life of Johnny Appleseed. One notable account is from the first chapter of The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan. Pollan states that since Johnny Appleseed was against grafting, his apples were not of an edible variety and could be used only for cider: "Really, what Johnny Appleseed was doing and the reason he was welcome in every cabin in Ohio and Indiana was he was bringing the gift of alcohol to the frontier. He was our American Dionysus."

In 2003, North Carolina Playwright Keith Smith wrote a one act musical play entitled "My Name is Johnny Appleseed", which is presented to school children to show that the true story of John Chapman is just as interesting as the mythical figure, who is shrouded in legend/fable.

One of the more successful films was Melody Time, the animated 1948 film from Walt Disney Studios featuring Dennis Day. The Legend of Johnny Appleseed, a 19-minute segment, tells the story of an apple farmer who sees others going west, wistfully wishing he was not tied down by his orchard, until an angel appears, singing an apple song, setting Johnny on a mission. When he treats a skunk kindly, all animals everywhere thereafter trust him. The cartoon features lively tunes, and a childlike simplicity of message. This animated short was included in Disney's American Legends, a compilation of four animated shorts.

Supposedly, the only surviving tree planted by Johnny Appleseed is on the farm of Richard and Phyllis Algeo of Nova, Ohio Some marketers claim it is a Rambo, although the Rambo was introduced to America in the 1640s by Peter Gunnarsson Rambo, more than a century before John Chapman was born. Some even make the claim that the Rambo was "Johnny Appleseed's favorite variety", ignoring that he had religious objections to grafting and preferred wild apples to all named varieties. It appears most nurseries are calling the tree the "Johnny Appleseed" variety, rather than a Rambo. Unlike the mid-summer Rambo, the Johnny Appleseed variety ripens in September and is a baking/applesauce variety similar to an Albemarle Pippen. Nurseries offer the Johnny Appleseed tree as an immature apple tree for planting, with scions from the Algeo stock grafted on them. Orchardists do not appear to be marketing the fruit of this tree.

References to Johnny Appleseed abound in popular culture. Johnny Appleseed is a character in Neil Gaiman's American Gods. Rock music bands NOFX, Guided by Voices, and Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros have all released songs titled "Johnny Appleseed". "Johnny Appleseed" also featured in a comic series in "The Victor" in UK, early Sixties. In Philip Roth's novel American Pastoral, the central character imagines himself as Johnny Appleseed when he moves from Newark to a rural community; in this case the figure stands for an innocent, childlike version of the American pioneer spirit. The Japanese Role-Playing game Wild ARMs 5 mentions Johnny Appleseed as a central figure in the plotline.

Apple Inc. uses a "John Appleseed" character as a John Smith in many of its recent adverts, video tutorials, and keynote presentation examples; this was also the alias of Mike Markkula under which he published several programs for the Apple II. "John Appleseed" also appears as a contact in many of Apple, inc. application demonstrations. The name appears on the caller ID, as a sender in "Mail" application demonstrations and screenshots and also in the icon of the "TextEdit" application.

Shelley Duvall's "Tall Tales & Legends" featured Johnny Appleseed, as played by Martin Short, in 1986. Also featuring Rob Reiner as Jack Smith and Molly Ringwald as his daughter Jenny, the story- while entertaining- takes considerable liberties with the original tall tale.

Robert Heinlein's Science Fiction novel "Farmer in the Sky", which depicts future colonists on Ganymede and takes up consciously many of the themes of the 19th century American frontier and homesteading, also includes a character who is known as "Johnny Appleseed" and like the historical one is involved in planting and spreading apple trees.

John Clute's science fiction novel "Appleseed" (2001) centers on a character who may (or may not) be the immortal John Chapman.

John Chapman and his brother Nathaniel are characters in Alice Hoffman's novel, The Red Garden. They appear in the chapter Eight Nights of Love as passing through the small town of Blackwell, where they plant an orchard but also the Tree of Life, in the center of said town, tree which is said to bloom and bear fruit in mid-winter. In Hoffman's book, John has a brief relation with a young woman called Minette Jacob, who was about to hang herself after having lost her husband, child, mother and sister, but who regains the joy of life after meeting the brothers. In the beginning of the chapter the author hints that John was reading Swedenborg's pamphlets and later in the novel, the characters actually refer to him as Johnny Appleseed. The variety of apples is called by the residents "Blackwell Look-No-Further."